No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

FortiMonitor vs SCOM comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 10, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

FortiMonitor
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
37th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
IT Infrastructure Monitoring (40th), IT Alerting and Incident Management (17th), Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) (11th)
SCOM
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
25th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
83
Ranking in other categories
Event Monitoring (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of FortiMonitor is 0.7%, down from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SCOM is 1.4%, down from 1.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SCOM1.4%
FortiMonitor0.7%
Other97.9%
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2677554 - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Engineer III at a energy/utilities company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Managing diverse networks with detailed alerts enhances device oversight
FortiManager is very helpful in managing our networks. We use it to manage 20 farms and various networks with hundreds of devices. The version we are using provides more detail than the older dashboard. We appreciate the alerting capabilities, which are integrated with SolarWinds to notify our team via SMS.
AK
Assistant Manager at SMS group GmbH
Have integrated effective monitoring and seamless alerting with improved visualization capabilities
The most valuable feature of SCOM is its monitoring capability, and we have integrated SCOM with Grafana, which is a dashboarding tool. We have implemented and integrated this to create dashboarding of the SCOM monitoring system for the database, SQL, and the Linux servers we have configured in SCOM. We have created separate dashboarding for it, and the monitoring and creating rules and monitors in the management servers and management packs that SCOM provides are very useful for us. The alerting mechanism of SCOM has benefited our operations because we have modified the thresholds as per our internal requirements. We have configured threshold modifications for the CPU, memory, and especially for disk space. For routine disk space usage on the system, we have provided a separate threshold configuration.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The product's initial setup phase is easy."
"FortiMonitor offers comprehensive monitoring capabilities, allowing me to track network traffic in and out effectively."
"The most valuable feature of FortiMonitor is user monitoring, as we are able to see if the user is following the policy or not from their system, and additionally the solution integrates well with Fortinet FortiGate and has centralized management."
"With FortiMonitor, you can get all the logs of the traffic information of the destination or the source."
"FortiMonitor's dashboard is very informative and user-friendly."
"The solution helps to see client infrastructure. It has many boxes and blinks green or red when the station goes up or down. We have different domains for the device groups that we monitor."
"Fortinet's customer support is very good."
"In FortiMonitor, we're linked up with our Netgear, CactusServer, and NOC. It's really valuable because everything's migrating to one dashboard for us system engineers. We can keep an eye on traffic, blocked sites, and the health of our hardware. That last part, about knowing if something's going to fail soon, is super important. It gives us time to sort things out before any big problems happen. As a system engineer, I need to keep tabs on everything – temperature, monitoring systems, and network operations. This data is really handy because it helps me ensure our site runs smoothly, whether it's turning systems on or off. Just last night, there was a system failure, but thanks to real-time monitoring, I quickly identified the problem and got the necessary replacement parts."
"The dashboard is in a class of its own, with a whole other range of competing products in management of datacenters and cloud environment."
"Does a great job with Microsoft technologies."
"This product helps companies detect problems before they cause any real problems like downtime."
"SCOM features object-based monitoring based on classes and discoveries and it gives you a lot of power and flexibility when you design and implement monitoring."
"The most valuable feature of SCOM is its monitoring capability, and we have integrated SCOM with Grafana, which is a dashboarding tool."
"The fact that I'm able to see all my devices and the status of them has been extremely useful."
"When it comes to monitoring Microsoft servers, it is very useful."
"Being able to make and customize management packs and send out notifications is very valuable."
 

Cons

"There is room for improvement in the FortiMonitor report. It is not ideal for showcasing to tech customers or managers, especially when trying to display high CPU usage from logins within a specific range of months or the most recent month."
"Sometimes, during high CPU usage, we cannot access FortiMonitor and must refresh it."
"For our type of country, it is always expensive, but it has competitive pricing."
"I think the current features are really good for me, nothing else comes to mind right now. Maybe some small improvements could be made in the customization and configuration part of the UI to make it easier or more intuitive. Customizable UI options, like we saw in the demo, could be helpful for everyone. But in our operational environment, having clear health status and system details is crucial for us system engineers. One feature I'd really like to see is a credential management system. It would help us keep track of who's logged in and how many times, which is important due to user restrictions. Sometimes, we need to manage logins more efficiently, like logging off other users to free up credentials. So having a feature like that would be really helpful."
"FortiMonitor could improve by having compatibility with other operating systems, such as Linux."
"FortiMonitor's monitoring could be much better. It should be like, in Palo Alto."
"Additionally, there are no AI features in FortiMonitor, which might be an area for enhancement."
"FortiMonitor could be improved by making it more convenient for smaller workloads, such as when configuring a few branches."
"SCOM is always known to be very unstable when it comes to SCOM Agents which are installed locally on all the servers."
"It would be a much better product if Microsoft provided management packs with the product."
"Documentation is poor, but the community makes up for it with good blogs and lots of how-to examples."
"Direct integration with third-party tools, like ticketing systems, is lacking but would be beneficial."
"There could be more integration of SIM in the solution."
"They can focus more on cloud monitoring instead of on-premise monitoring. We should be able to monitor cloud-related applications. They can include this feature in the next release. If it is in the cloud, we can have scalability by using Kubernetes. The container is containerized, packaged, and managed using Kubernetes. This feature is not there in SCOM. Going forward, if they can focus on that, it will be great."
"System Center just provided upgrade and update features for Windows clients, and Windows systems, and did not support Linux, Android, or iOS, and other operating systems. They need to provide better integration with other operating systems if they don't already."
"Then there is also an issue with capacity and limited space. That is something that needs to be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool's pricing model in Vietnam is a bit high. I rate the product price as an eight out of ten."
"In terms of licensing, while it may not be the most expensive option on the market, it's relatively cost-effective. You can obtain licenses at a lower cost, with the calculation being straightforward. For example, if you onboard around 5,000 devices, you'll need approximately 5,000 licenses, as each device typically counts as one license."
"The price of FortiMonitor is approximately $200 annually for 225 users. The price is competitive."
"On a scale from one to ten, I rate the pricing a nine since it is a good solution that is available at a cheap price."
"We have a large customer base for Fortinet, and the additional buying power got us really great discounts."
"FortiMonitor's price is very high."
"There are additional costs needed for certain functionality, such as scalability."
"Compared to other solutions, FortiMonitor is a very expensive solution."
"We have an EA with Microsoft, and it comes as part of the EA."
"We have an enterprise agreement that includes this product as part of it."
"The pricing is good, and it's part of their system center suite."
"SCOM is part of the System Center suite and I am satisfied with the pricing."
"We have to pay for a license and the price is fine for us."
"Our licensing fees are approximately $30 per user, per month."
"It is the cheapest product available in the market."
"The platform is cost-effective due to our existing Microsoft support."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Network Monitoring Software solutions are best for your needs.
909,725 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
8%
Construction Company
8%
Healthcare Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise22
Large Enterprise54
 

Questions from the Community

What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?
I have a clear bias because I work for Panopta. We aren't a fit for everyone, but I can confirm that Panopta is a lot less work to stand up and maintain. It's also a lot easier to use and onboard n...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for FortiMonitor?
FortiMonitor does save time but not significantly on costs, as there are still expenses related to procurement, installation, and licensing.
What needs improvement with FortiMonitor?
There are areas for improvement that FortiManager is addressing. We have not yet upgraded to the latest software versions, being a full revision behind, but we plan to update soon since the current...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SCOM?
I am not aware of the exact pricing as it is managed by my supervisor. As an academic institution, we receive substantial discounts.
What needs improvement with SCOM?
We believe that the dashboarding in SCOM needs to be improved or enhanced because it is not too expressive in reporting. We can work on deploying new ways of viewing things and modifying visualizat...
What is your primary use case for SCOM?
My usual use case for SCOM is as an administrator role where I create reports and provide system configuration for Linux and installation of the SCOM agent. I handle deploying and upgrading the age...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Panopta
System Center Operations Manager, SCOM 2012
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

SONY, GoDaddy, HCL, ING, ARMOR, billboard
Dialog Telekom
Find out what your peers are saying about FortiMonitor vs. SCOM and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
909,725 professionals have used our research since 2012.